White House tells Congo’s soccer team to isolate, citing Ebola outbreak

The White House has told Congo’s national soccer team to isolate for three weeks in Belgium before it can enter the United States to take part in this year’s World Cup, citing the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo.

“They need to maintain that bubble, or they risk not being able to travel to the United States,” Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House Task Force on the FIFA World Cup 2026, told ESPN on Friday. “We cannot be any clearer.”

An outbreak of the Ebola virus centered in Congo is suspected to have caused more than 170 deaths and about 750 infections, according to the World Health Organization. The outbreak is spreading quickly, the organization said, and could be worse than initial figures suggested.

The WHO has assessed the risk as high at the national and regional levels and low at the global level.

The disease broke out in an area where years of conflict have displaced more than 1 million people and eroded healthcare capacity, allowing a rare form of the virus to circulate undetected for weeks.

“We are taking this extremely seriously,” Giuliani said in the ESPN interview.

The Congolese players had already arrived in Belgium, Giuliani said, adding that most of them were already based in Europe. Other members of the delegation, such as staffers, have traveled from Congo.

“We’ve been very clear to FIFA, we’ve been very clear to Congo that they should maintain the integrity of their bubble for 21 days before they can then come to Houston on June 11,” he said.

“If there are other people that are going to be coming in, they need to have a separate bubble from that team,” Giuliani said. If anyone had symptoms, he added, that would jeopardize the entire team’s ability to take part in the World Cup.

Congo’s first match of the tournament is scheduled for June 17 in Houston, against Portugal.

Congo this week canceled its training camp in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, because of the outbreak.

Trump administration officials, confronted by overlapping outbreaks of Ebola and the hantavirus, have taken a more aggressive approach to the isolation of people who may have been exposed than in past outbreaks.

“The CDC is leaning in even heavier than the World Health Organization is at this point,” Giuliani said, referring to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We want to make sure that there is nothing that is going to come in or near our borders here on this.”

Some experts have expressed surprise at the White House’s approach, which has extended to keeping American doctors who were exposed to Ebola at foreign hospitals.

This week, the Trump administration temporarily blocked entry to the United States for people without US passports who had been in Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in the preceding three weeks. The order is in effect for 30 days.